A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

ISSN 1521-2300

Logging On

Scott Lloyd Dewitt and Cheryl Ball, Guest Editors

The Manifesto IssueIf our scholarship seems too cutting-edge, too in-your-face, despite its having
been deeply considered, then it is reserved for discussing around conference-hotel
bars, on listservs and blogs, or over dinner and wine in the backyard patio.

Manifestos as ScholarshipWrought with connotation, politically and emotionally charged, manifestos
call us to action and demand change—in the streets, in the workplace, in our
classrooms, in our minds, and in the virtual spaces we inhabit.

Manifestos as Scholarship

Scott Lloyd DeWitt and Cheryl E. Ball, Guest Editors

Wrought with connotation, politically and emotionally charged, manifestos
call us to action and demand change—in the streets, in the workplace, in our
classrooms, in our minds, and in the virtual spaces we inhabit. Put the manifesto
in a mediated space that typically features scholarly work, and it provokes
different change-actions. The form of a manifesto seeks sizeable response and
has the ability to move an argument quickly to the forefront of a conversation
(and keep it there). The manifesto’s typical dense state and its sometimes
confrontational approach make it easily susceptible to critique yet can quickly
facilitate invention for new scholarly conversations and directions. Although
we hope for the latter, we are also well aware that the former (i.e., critique)
can function to hinder the perceived value of the texts in this issue. The
qualities above that make a manifesto are also qualities that can prevent scholarly
reception of these texts, which is why we are compelled to outline our peer-review
process here.

For the manifesto issue, we followed Kairos’ peer-review
process as closely as possible through the journal’s three-tier review system.
We made some necessary modifications along the way, which we outline here.
Due to the overwhelming number of submissions—more than Kairos has ever received
for any themed section or special issue—combined with a shortened production
timeline, we expanded our first tier reviewers to include volunteers from the
Kairos staff. They worked with us to pre-review the submissions, helping us
decide whether a particular manifesto should proceed to the editorial board
for a full review. If a text was promoted to a second-tier review, we assigned
several Kairos editorial board members who specialized in the manifesto topic
to review it. (Because of the number of submissions, we had to conduct reviews
“off-list,” meaning that instead of using Kairos’ usual method of asking the
entire board to respond to a single text on the editorial-board listserv, we
sent URLs to individual reviewers backchannel. This is a typical process for
Kairos special issues and was the process that the CoverWeb section used for
many years.) We would then review the responses and contact authors who, if
accepted, would revise their texts according to the reviewers’ feedback (sometimes
with additional editorial interaction) during Tier III. The final versions
of the manifestos were then submitted to us for an eight-step copy- and design-editing
process, which included author queries and proofreading. (This last part is
typical for any webtext—in special issues or not—that is published in the Topoi
section of Kairos.)

Because manifestos differ significantly in scope and purpose from the webtexts
Kairos usually runs, we wrote a heuristic for reviewers to use. Our goal was
create review criteria that reflected the Call For manifestos while also allowing
approaches that we really couldn’t have imagined until we received submissions.
The questions were intended to help reviewers generate a response that would
consider the manifesto form while also allowing for flexibility and openness,
since not all of the questions would be relevant to all submissions. The criteria
were crafted around four major considerations: Readership, Form, Media, and
Response. (Manifesto and webtext are used as interchangeable
terms in these criteria.)

Readership

Is the manifesto timely and relevant to the readership of Kairos? Has the manifesto
allowed the author to address an issue in the moment that might otherwise
get lost if it were published on a traditional scholarship timeline? If the
webtext is coming from outside the discipline, does it encourage cross- and
inter-disciplinary thinking about its subject matter? Could the manifesto
bring a new readership to Kairos?

Form

Does the author understand “manifesto” as a text form? Is the manifesto concise
and focused? Does the author recognize the text form as something other than
traditional scholarship by avoiding lengthy, fully contextualized arguments
and indepth reviews of literature? Is the argument clear and pointed? Does
it call to action?

Media

Is the medium in which webtext is produced appropriate for Kairos? Does the
chosen medium make sense in terms of the piece’s argument? If the medium,
on first reading, does not seem appropriate, does the author justify its
use? Are the design aesthetics appropriate and of high quality? Is the use
of media and design in the webtext purposeful?

Response:

Is the webtext provocative? Could it elicit quick, fruitful, engaging, and
perhaps heated conversations among the readership of Kairos? Could you imagine
that these conversations might lead to important research questions for future
scholarship? Does the manifesto explicitly call for or pose questions for
future scholarship?

As the above criteria likely indicate to readers, we saw the manifesto special
issue filling two needs: as an immediate location for short scholarly work
and as an opening for additional work. We see the manifestos in this issue
standing proud and shouting their passionate points, and we also see them as
beginnings for more manifestos and more in-depth scholarship (be they articles
or webtexts; e-books or films, etc.).

What we are most proud of in this issue is both the range of topics in the
manifestos and the number of authors new to digital scholarship who chose to
create a text, submit it, and are subsequently being published in this issue.
Many are graduate students or junior scholars—as the tradition of Kairos holds
dear—although several are senior scholars who have paved the way for more-recent
scholars to be able to publish such work and have it count. We applaud all
of our authors in this issue and hope that more are willing to produce kairotic,
momentous outbursts for Kairos for the new section, Disputatio: A Readers Forum,
which Beth Hewett and Cheryl developed in response to the need for short works
in light of the high response rate to our manifesto call. We hope that readers
find much to delight in, argue with, and respond to in these manifestos and
begin to create their own.

Kairos is a refereed open-access online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. The journal reaches a wide audience -- currently 45,000 readers per month, hailing from Ascension Island to Zimbabwe (and from every top-level domain country code in between); our international readership typically runs about 4,000 readers per month. Kairos publishes bi-annually, in August and January, with occasional special issues in May. Our current acceptance rate for published articles is approximately 10%.

Since its first issue in January of 1996, the mission of Kairos has been to publish scholarship that examines digital and multimodal composing practices, promoting work that enacts its scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media. Kairos is one of the leading peer-reviewed journals in English Studies, made so by its dedication to academic quality through the journal’s extensive peer-review and editorial production processes.

We publish "webtexts," which are texts authored specifically for publication on the World
Wide Web. Webtexts are scholarly examinations of topics related to technology in English Studies fields (e.g., rhetoric, composition, technical and professional communication, education, creative writing, language and literature) and related fields such as media studies, informatics, arts technology, and others. Besides scholarly webtexts, Kairos publishes teaching-with-technology narratives, reviews of print and digital media, extended interviews with leading scholars, interactive exchanges, "letters" to the editors, and news and announcements of interest.

Because questions of copyright, intellectual property, and fair use often arise for scholars who wish to create digital publications, we have developed a statement of copyright that encourages authors to carefully consider their rights and responsibilities while advocating for a strengthening of fair use. Our copyright statement also provides authors with the opportunity to build upon and republish their work because we are committed to the continuing development of intellectual work and believe that authors should retain the rights to scholarly production.

We invite you to share your views about Kairos, and we hope you'll consider submitting your work for our editorial review.